Bush under attack over Iraq deals

THE Bush Administration is under further fire for alleged favouritism in awarding contracts for the restructure of Iraq, with a new study showing that beneficiaries of the $8bn (£4.70bn) in contracts awarded so far are overwhelmingly donors to Bush's re-election campaign.

The report by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research organisation focusing on special interests and ethics in government, found that most of the 10 largest contracts went to companies that employed former highranking government officials, or executives with close ties to members of Congress and even the agencies awarding their contracts.

Nearly 60% of all companies surveyed had government or military ties. The report also criticised the governance of the process.

'No single agency supervised the contracting process for the government,' the CPI's executive director Charles Lewis said. 'This situation alone shows how susceptible the contracting system is to waste, fraud and cronyism.'

The study investigated more than 70 companies and individual contractors. Those had donated more than $500,000 to Bush's last election campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past decade.

The companies that won contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed a total of nearly $49m to politicians, with the Republicans getting 55% more than the Democrats.

The Bush Administration has defended its decision to award major contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan without a tendering process. It says that would have been too time-consuming.

The Administration hit back at the report. Edward Fox, an assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development, objected to the assertion that there was little oversight of the awarding of contracts.

'The USAID inspector general's review of all Iraq contracts has shown that all Iraq contracts to date have been done in compliance with federal regulations,' he said.

The State Department also defended the process.

'The reason that these companies get the contracts has nothing to do with who may have worked there before. Those people in senior positions have no influence over the decision,' a spokesman said.

The two companies which have benefited most from the Iraq reconstruction programme - Halliburton and Bechtel - have also come in for the most criticism.

Halliburton, once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has more than $2.3bn in contracts.

Bechtel has a $1bn capital construction contract involving Iraq's utilities and infrastructure.